The Eye Exam
A comprehensive eye examination consists of many tests that give your optometrist information on the health of your eyes and evaluate how your eyes and visual system are functioning. The eye examination will typically consist of the following sections:
Case History
After case history, may be add: This will help your optometrist to tailor the eye examination and recommendations to your individual needs.
Vision Testing
A number of vision tests are used to determine how your visual system is working. This could include how clear your vision is, whether both eyes are seeing equally, whether your vision is distorted, whether both eyes see the same size, how good the quality of your vision is, night vision, and other tests. This will help your optometrist determine what sort of visual correction will best suit your needs.
Eye Coordination
The optometrist will evaluate your eye movements - how well your eyes work individually and together, the strength of you eye muscles, the integrity of the nerves that are involved in eye movement and vision, your focusing ability and agility at close range, and many others. This is an important part of the exam, which can help the optometrist to understand the causes of eye fatigue, ocular headaches, eye turns, as an example.
Eye Health
Your optometrist will use specialized equipment to examine all the structures of your eye, both inside and outside to determine if there are any indications of eye disease or signs in the eye that might alert you to systemic disease. For example, dry eye, macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetes are but a few conditions that may be diagnosed through these tests.
Further Testing
Based on the results of the tests of the regular eye examination, the optometrist may then choose to conduct more specific tests to help in diagnosis of a suspected condition or conditions. For example, photos may be taken for follow-up, visual fields may be indicated, etc.
Recommendations for Treatment
The optometrist will summarize the results of all the tests and make recommendations for glasses, contact lenses, laser surgery, dry eye therapy, further testing, surgery, eye exercises, follow-up with your family physician, etc. They may recommend how to use your eyes in your daily activities, or what protective eyewear to use. A recommendation will be made about how often you should have your eyes examined.